LTO 3 / LTO Ultrium-3 Tapes

At one time, tape dominated the music and video markets as the preferred media for watching and recording. By the early 90s, digital had begun taking over and, while tape fought a valiant battle, eventually digital won over.

But there is still one area where tape dominates: data backup and storage. Today's servers use three Ultrium tape formats for data backup. Digital Data Storage (DDS), Digital Linear Tape (DLT), and Linear Tape Open (LTO). LTO-3 has a capacity for storage of up to 800 GB, making it a favorite among IT professionals. Additionally, LTO 3's speed is ideal for companies that have vast amounts of data to be backed up each night. No more worrying about backups that extend well into morning. With LTO, backups will complete quickly and efficiently.

LTO began with LTO-1 in 2000. The first LTO series of Ultrium storage tapes only held 100 GB of storage with a top data transfer rate of 10 MB per second. Compare that to the LTO 3 series released in 2004, which holds up to 800 GB and transfers data at 80 MB per second. The LTO 3 series also introduced the Write Once Read Many (WORM) function. WORM simply means data can only be written to an Ultrium tape once, but it can be read many times. Without WORM, a tape can be written over many times.

WORM is used for more than safety in data loss. For some organizations, it's important to have a reliable backup of data from a specific date. With WORM, LTO 3 tapes introduced to companies storage that cannot be modified. When a company chooses WORM for an LTO 3 backup, that company can mark the date on that tape and be sure that the data hasn't been modified on it since that date.

LTO 3 is still a popular Ultrium option for security professionals. With high speed and storage capacity, the LTO 3 is a great solution for all of your business's storage needs.